Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 497: Christianity in Space, Redeeming Turkish Delight, and How To Sneeze

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Strand­ed Astro­naut Held Onto Faith in Dark­est Moments: ‘God Was There’ (Sylvia St. Cyr, The Roys Report): “After being strand­ed for nine months in space, vet­er­an NASA astro­naut Bar­ry ‘Butch’ Wilmore is shar­ing how his faith in God kept him going.… Wilmore, a mem­ber and elder of Prov­i­dence Bap­tist Church in Pasade­na, Texas, stayed con­nect­ed with his church through­out his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elder­ly church mem­bers through­out his time strand­ed on the sta­tion, to encour­age them.”
2. What Fol­lows from Lab Leak? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “First, and most impor­tant­ly, the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 leaked from a lab the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty we should expect anoth­er pan­dem­ic. Research at Wuhan was not espe­cial­ly unusu­al or high-tech. Mod­i­fy­ing virus­es such as coro­n­avirus­es (e.g., insert­ing spike pro­teins, adapt­ing recep­tor-bind­ing domains) is com­mon prac­tice in virol­o­gy research and gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments with virus­es have been wide­ly con­duct­ed. Thus, man­u­fac­tur­ing a virus capa­ble of killing ~20 mil­lion human beings or more is well with­in the capa­bil­i­ty of say ~500‑1000 labs world­wide. The num­ber of such labs is grow­ing in num­ber and such research is becom­ing less cost­ly and eas­i­er to con­duct. Thus, lab-leak means the risks are larg­er than we thought and increas­ing.”
   • Some very prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions in this short piece.
3. The Hid­den Hands: Amanu­enses and the Let­ters Behind the Let­ters (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “Yes, the sec­re­taries could write com­pe­tent Greek. But often, due to the per­son­al addi­tions at the end of these let­ters, I was able to com­pare the hand­writ­ing and style of the author him­self. And get this: in many cas­es, the author’s own Greek was bet­ter than the scribe’s. More refined. More flu­id. More leg­i­ble. This shat­tered my assump­tions. It meant that we can’t assume that peo­ple used sec­re­taries only because they were illit­er­ate, une­d­u­cat­ed, or of low sta­tus. On the con­trary, peo­ple who were clear­ly capa­ble writers—sometimes bet­ter writers—still made use of amanu­enses.”
   • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the way ancient let­ters were writ­ten with the help of assis­tants — includ­ing let­ters in the New Tes­ta­ment.
   • Vague­ly relat­ed (in the sense that it’s about the his­tor­i­cal back­ground for Bible stuff): Did Jesus teach in Greek? (Ian Paul, blog): “The argu­ment about Jesus and Greek has sev­er­al lay­ers, start­ing with the most gen­er­al. Were the regions Jesus taught in mul­ti­lin­gual (poly­glot), and how do we know? Is it like­ly that Jesus him­self was mul­ti­lin­gual? And is there spe­cif­ic evi­dence of this in the New Tes­ta­ment, in exam­ples of his teach­ing?”
4. Why Chris­t­ian Men Need Friend­ship, Not Just “Account­abil­i­ty” (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Account­abil­i­ty is a fruit from a much larg­er tree. In an age in which mil­lions of Amer­i­can men are so lone­ly it’s lit­er­al­ly killing them, the urgent issue is not find­ing some­one to receive a report of your web activ­i­ty. It’s find­ing some­one who’ll talk to you at all. Why? Because friend­ship has a sanc­ti­fy­ing pow­er. Not only is it eas­i­er to be hon­est and trans­par­ent with some­one whom you’re con­vinced is a true friend, but the friend­ship itself is a means of grace in the fight against lust.”
5. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Acci­den­tal­ly Texted Me Its War Plans (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the nation­al-secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States would com­mu­ni­cate on Sig­nal about immi­nent war plans. I also could not believe that the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to the pres­i­dent would be so reck­less as to include the edi­tor in chief of The Atlantic in such dis­cus­sions with senior U.S. offi­cials, up to and includ­ing the vice pres­i­dent.”
   • A wild sto­ry. Lots of fol­low-up in the news. Just google for it.
   • Sev­en Ways of Look­ing at a Group Chat (Nick Cat­to­gio, The Dis­patch): “There are three dis­tinct scan­dals here and dif­fer­ent cul­prits in each one. The first is using Sig­nal instead of secure gov­ern­ment chan­nels to dis­cuss some­thing as sen­si­tive as mil­i­tary strikes. Every­one involved, save Jef­frey Gold­berg, bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for that. The sec­ond is mis­tak­en­ly includ­ing Gold­berg in the dis­cus­sion, for which Waltz would seem to be at fault. And the third is going so far as to share ‘oper­a­tional details’ in the chat, poten­tial­ly plac­ing peo­ple in the field at risk, which sure sounds like reck­less mis­han­dling of clas­si­fied information—a sub­ject on which Repub­li­cans have had a lot to say in recent years. The blame for that would appear to land on Hegseth.”
   • Inves­ti­ga­tion Reveals DOGE Had Just Laid Off The Guy Whose Job It Was To Make Sure Jef­frey Gold­berg Wasn’t In The War Group Chat (Baby­lon Bee)
6. The Inklings:
   • Why JRR Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed (Joseph Pearce, Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter): “Fro­do Bag­gins, as the one cho­sen to be the Ring bear­er, is the Cross bear­er. He is, there­fore, a Christ fig­ure. This is why Tolkien has him leav­ing Riven­dell on Dec. 25 and arriv­ing at Mount Doom (Gol­go­tha) on March 25 (Good Fri­day). Frodo’s jour­ney, or pil­grim­age, begins on Christ’s birth­day and ends on the date of Christ’s death.”
   • In Search of Turk­ish Delight (Valerie Stivers, First Things): “Işin quotes Amer­i­can Naval physi­cian James McK­ay, writ­ing in 1830: Turk­ish delight was ‘a deli­cious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fra­grant fla­vor behind.’ The French artist and writer Pre­tex­tat Lecomte described it as ‘beau­ti­ful’ in col­or and ‘warm and trans­par­ent.’ To make it, Turk­ish con­fec­tion­ers used hand-sift­ed wheat starch (pro­duced by a domes­tic process with a long local tra­di­tion), and employed a labo­ri­ous tech­nique that called for sev­er­al hours of con­tin­u­ous stir­ring. They used musk and rose water as fla­vor­ings, and also sprin­kled musk on the pow­dered sug­ar coat­ing. They rubbed the trays used to mold it and the scis­sors used to cut it with fra­grant almond oil. By the 1880s, Işin says, the fla­vors had mul­ti­plied to include clot­ted cream, mas­tic, almond, and pis­ta­chio. In the 1900s came pine nut and hazel­nut, and fla­vors from essences or syrups such as vio­let, lemon, and bit­ter orange. This starts to sound like a dessert a child could dream of, or that an open-mind­ed and plea­sure-lov­ing adult like C. S. Lewis would find tempt­ing. It seems like­ly that very few mod­ern eaters have ever tast­ed true Turk­ish delight, at least out­side the Grand Bazaar. All con­tem­po­rary recipes use corn starch. Musk oil is ille­gal.”
     • I am both per­son­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed that I can’t taste it and thrilled that Lewis was­n’t crazy.
7. How wor­ried should legal immi­grants be about Trump’s depor­ta­tions? (Nicole Narea, Vox): “These are uncer­tain times for many immi­grants in the US. There have been reports of indi­vid­ual visa and green card hold­ers and tourists who have been detained and deport­ed. How­ev­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does not seem to be indis­crim­i­nate­ly tar­get­ing legal immi­grants who have autho­riza­tion to be in the US on a large scale. Some have report­ed­ly been tar­get­ed based on their polit­i­cal activism.…  And it’s not just immi­grants who have been affect­ed. A US cit­i­zen said he was walk­ing down the streets of Chica­go when he was arrest­ed by immi­gra­tion agents, who con­fis­cat­ed his ID and held him for 10 hours before releas­ing him. Even though lim­it­ed in num­ber, these cas­es have been going viral — and are under­stand­ably caus­ing fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Gulf of Amer­i­ca (Pearls Before Swine)
• After Years of Debate, The­olo­gians Now Agree That Lying To Your Den­tist About Floss­ing Is Not A Sin (Baby­lon Bee)
• Lessons of His­to­ry (Pearls Before Swine)
• Sneeze smarter, not loud­er: The sci­ence of a qui­eter sneeze (Ted­dy Amenabar, Álvaro Val­iño & Artur Galocha, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A sneeze can come on in a flash. The more air in the lungs, the loud­er it might be, Pic­cir­il­lo said. If pos­si­ble, exhale before your sneeze bursts forth to release some of the pres­sure in the lungs and bleed the bal­loon.”
  • This was way longer and more inter­ac­tive than it need­ed to be. Besides exhal­ing first, the oth­er big tips are to relax your vocal cords and to shove your tongue against the top of your mouth to route the sneeze through your nose.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.